Traditionally, there were two different types of elements in HTML:

• Block-level Elements - Render to begin on a new line (by default); may contain inline or other block-level elements
• Inline Elements - Render on the same line (by default); may only contain other inline elements - no block-level elements

HTML5 replaces these with more complex categories. Block-level roughly corresponds to the HTML5 Flow Content category (<div> tags). Inline roughly corresponds to the HTML5 Phrasing Content category (<span> tags).

Overall, W3C now defines seven kinds of content:

• Metadata content
• Flow content
• Sectioning content
• Heading content
• Phrasing content
• Embedded content
• Interactive content

Learn more